Indoor air quality is a significant factor in occupant's health, productivity, comfort, and overall satisfaction with a building structure. In a commercial space, indoor air quality can have significant economic implications for occupants and landlords. In some cases, indoor air pollutant levels may be significantly higher than outdoor air pollutant levels. In addition to pollutants that enter an indoor space from outside, contaminants such as volatile organic compounds may be released by cleaning materials, building materials, and even furniture. ASHRAE and other sustainability codes and standards specify specific metrics and standards around ventilation rates, moisture, contaminants/pollutants, temperature, and many other factors.
Air quality sensors may be used to monitor the air quality of an indoor space. Further, many safety hazards such as fire, carbon monoxide, natural gas, and earthquake can be detected by specialized sensors. The quality of data collected from indoor air quality sensors and the effectiveness of safety hazard sensors may be dependent on the number of distributed sensors.
While some sensors operate on battery power, other sensors may require electrical wiring to receive power from the mains power supply. In some cases, adding wiring to existing structures may be particularly challenging. Further, conflicting priorities may exist between preferred locations for sensors that detect air quality and safety hazards and preferred locations for providing notification of detected air quality and detected safety hazards, for example, to occupants of a building. Thus, a solution that allows effective distribution of indoor air quality sensors and safety hazard sensors and that provides flexibility in installing the sensors while enabling improved notification of air quality and safety hazards is desirable.